"She said the letter came back," Miss Penhallow went on, quite evenly, "with the seal unbroken. And your hand on the cover."
"Yes," he said.
She waited. He did not say anything else. After a moment she turned her face away and looked out over the levels, and he could not tell what she thought, and he found to his surprise that he minded.
"You must think me a monster," he said at last.
"I don't know what I think you. I've known you an hour and a half." She was still looking away. "I know you came. I didn't know if you would. I wrote that letter four times and tore it up three, because I thought — a man who sends his sister's letter back unread when she's alone and penniless in Carlisle is not a man who'll drive a hundred miles because a stranger tells him to. And I posted it anyway, because there wasn't anyone else." She turned back. "And you came. So I don't know what I think. I expect I'll decide when I've seen what you do next."
It was, he reflected, the most honest thing anyone had said to him in two years. He had been a duke for two years. Nobody said honest things to dukes. They said *Your Grace* and *of course* and *how very true*, and watched his face to see whether they had pleased him.
"That's fair," he said.
"I wasn't trying to be fair. I was trying to be accurate."
In spite of everything, he nearly smiled.
"Why did you send it at all?" he said. "You'd promised her. She'd begged you. You told me so in the church. You could have married him and held your tongue, and nobody would ever have known."
"I'd have known."
"That's not an answer."